Star Trek The General Star Trek Thread - From TOS to Corporate Schenanigans

Captain X

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Osaul
I think they're trying to emulate the pilot version of the uniforms more. Pointless, given everything else, but whatever, let them waste money.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
It's only vaguely relevant to this thread, but I couldn't help but put my thoughts down.

The Romulans (if you ignore Star Trek: Picard) are sort of awesome, aren't they? A technologically advanced empire that actually behaves like an empire (which hilariously baffles the Federation), with a cut throat political system, that yet possesses a strange sort of honour.

And on top of all that, they have some of the best warship designs in fiction.

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I would have liked to get to know them a bit more, but modern Star Trek has seen to it that I won't.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Yeah the D'deridexs are iconic in my mind. Too bad they never appeared in the movies. Those generic birds of prey in Nemesis were bleh.

I would have liked to get to know them a bit more, but modern Star Trek has seen to it that I won't.

You can play as a faction of a remnant fleet of Romulans in STO (the closest you're going to get to a canon continuation of Trek). You have to pick to ally with either the Feddies or the Klingons (and can thus access their capitals, their ships, and questlines), but you still get your own capital city in the remnant fleet with some Romulan questlines and the ability to get Romulan ships (but IIRC now anybody can fly any ship now?). You get to fight Empress Sela and her empire.
 

bullethead

Part-time fanfic writer
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The Romulans (if you ignore Star Trek: Picard) are sort of awesome, aren't they?
Mmm... not really. The problem with the Romulans is that the Berman era stuff solidly pigeon-holed them into the "treacherous assholes" role, with only minor deviations from that mold. It got so bad that Patrick Stewart called them "boring" when he got the first treatments for Insurrection.

Like, the people who were really big on Romulans seem to mostly be into the Rihannsu trilogy stuff, not anything post-TOS.
 

S'task

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Like, the people who were really big on Romulans seem to mostly be into the Rihannsu trilogy stuff, not anything post-TOS.
You can play as a faction of a remnant fleet of Romulans in STO (the closest you're going to get to a canon continuation of Trek). You have to pick to ally with either the Feddies or the Klingons (and can thus access their capitals, their ships, and questlines), but you still get your own capital city in the remnant fleet with some Romulan questlines and the ability to get Romulan ships (but IIRC now anybody can fly any ship now?). You get to fight Empress Sela and her empire.

Star Trek Online draws HEAVILY from the Rihannsu series (there's four books in it, not three) and it manages to merge the two pretty well. Another series of books that help meld the Rihannsu style lore with the TNG style Romulans is the Vulcan's Soul trilogy, which specifically set out to act as a bridge between the Rihannsu lore and Romulan lore from Nemesis.

They're probably my favorite faction of Star Trek as well (if the username, user icon, and signature didn't give it away) especially when using the lens of the Rihannsu series. I personally think that you can still see shades of the original "Honorable Roman" esq. portrayal of the Romulans in TNG era episodes, from "TNG: The Defector" to "Voy: Eye of a Needle" there's a more honorable streak to the Romulans that peeks through, and while you can argue it was treacherous, the Romulans were also the first power to truly recognize and understand the scope of the Dominion threat and sought to do something about it and protect the Alpha and Beta quadrants from them (DS9: "Visionary"), which is very telling seeing how while you can argue it was due to selfishness, the Romulans were arguably the power LEAST threatened by the Dominion as they had no territory near the Wormhole nor would they have born the brunt of the invasion.

If you want, one can even go so far as to "paint the villains white" with the Romulans when you consider how their actions always seem to be poking at the areas where the Federation is weakest, with plans and schemes that never actually seem to be fully capable threats to the Federation but are just strong enough to get the Federation to wake up and up their game. In TOS they were the ones that poked the Federation and got them to start paying more attention to military matters with an incursion across the Neutral Zone... just before the Klingons started some serious shit. Then in TNG they were the ones who started poking the Federation when the Borg began their scouting in the Beta Quadrant, while also upping the spy games with the Federation just as spy games were becoming more critical with the Dominion and ensuring that reactive elements in the Klingon Empire failed to take power ensuring a stronger Federation/Klingon alliance. As to a motive for them acting as a secret "mentor" to the Federation? Simple enough: making sure their original homeworld and kin are well protected. Heck, it was the Romulans who arguably created the Federation via the Earth-Romulan War, forcing the Vulcans into a proper alliance with others who would ensure their security.

Am I serious with this idea of the Romulans being, in effect, trickster mentors to the Federation? No, not really, but if you want to get creative with how you look at the Romulans they actually have a lot open with them.
 

Battlegrinder

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I suppose that even works out of universe, like how the Romulans featured heavily in Picard in order to reminds us how great TNG really was and maybe reevaluate those preachy "humans have evolved and are so much better than this 20th century nonsense" episodes now that we know what the alternative is.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
As to a motive for them acting as a secret "mentor" to the Federation? Simple enough: making sure their original homeworld and kin are well protected. Heck, it was the Romulans who arguably created the Federation via the Earth-Romulan War, forcing the Vulcans into a proper alliance with others who would ensure their security.

If you operated purely off Star Trek 2009, you wouldn't realise that Vulcan has massive cultural significance to the Romulans (disregarding just how much of an important planet Vulcan is. You could literally make an entire trilogy out of its destruction and the aftermath, but JJ Abrams is an idiot).

It annoys me how much of a role the Romulan Empire should have played in the aftermath of the Dominion War but never got to because Abrams wanted his reboot. As I understand it they were essentially the power of the Alpha quadrant after the Feddies and the Klingons had bled themselves dry.

All that aside, I think I might have already said, but one of the biggest reason I love the Romulans is that they act like an Empire. A sophisticated society with an efficient central government (contrasting the glorified tribal confederation of the Klingons) that acts purely in its own interest is like a mallet to the Federation's hippy bollocks.
 

Husky_Khan

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If you operated purely off Star Trek 2009, you wouldn't realise that Vulcan has massive cultural significance to the Romulans (disregarding just how much of an important planet Vulcan is. You could literally make an entire trilogy out of its destruction and the aftermath, but JJ Abrams is an idiot).

Nah friend. We had Star Trek: Nemesis make the Romulans even more interesting. By having one of them smuggle an unknown device into their Parliament building with ease and wiping them out, then introducing clone-Picard and the Remans!

For some reason that whole tangent was never developed beyond that film... :unsure:
 

DarthOne

☦️
If you operated purely off Star Trek 2009, you wouldn't realise that Vulcan has massive cultural significance to the Romulans (disregarding just how much of an important planet Vulcan is. You could literally make an entire trilogy out of its destruction and the aftermath, but JJ Abrams is an idiot).

It annoys me how much of a role the Romulan Empire should have played in the aftermath of the Dominion War but never got to because Abrams wanted his reboot. As I understand it they were essentially the power of the Alpha quadrant after the Feddies and the Klingons had bled themselves dry.

All that aside, I think I might have already said, but one of the biggest reason I love the Romulans is that they act like an Empire. A sophisticated society with an efficient central government (contrasting the glorified tribal confederation of the Klingons) that acts purely in its own interest is like a mallet to the Federation's hippy bollocks.
Preach it man.

One of these days I swear I'm going to write that Dominion War AU...
 

S'task

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Nah friend. We had Star Trek: Nemesis make the Romulans even more interesting. By having one of them smuggle an unknown device into their Parliament building with ease and wiping them out, then introducing clone-Picard and the Remans!

For some reason that whole tangent was never developed beyond that film... :unsure:
Firstly, SENATE. The Romulan are Space-Rome/Dark Elves, they had a SENATE, not a dirty barbarian Parliament. :p

Secondly, yeah, Nemesis did the Romulans very dirty, especially via the introductions of the Remans. They were one of the most nonsensical additions to the Romulans they could come up with. A powerful telepathic species kept enslaved by the Romulans? Can I see the Romulans keeping slave races? Not really, it doesn't fit with their space Rome / space Eastern Bloc motif (slaves would have been more a Klingon might makes right space Vikings thing). If they DID have slaves, it should have been a hodgepodge of species AND Romulans as it should have been a status that people could fall to. Then you make the villain of Nemesis Sela, who was leading a slave rebellion against the Senate, as she had been reduced in status to that of a slave due to all her failures in TNG, and with the Romulan military weakened in the aftermath of the Dominion War and so not as able to put down a rebellion.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
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Sotnik
I will say, I did like Dina Meyer as Commander Donatra... she was lovely even if her characters role in the film was kinda lame.

Plus it was a nice gesture seeing that she said Picard had at least one friend in the Romulan Empire. I haven't seen Star Trek: Picard yet but I'm sure that plot hook wasn't just left dangling for over a decade in such a Romulan heavy storyline. :sneaky:
 
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